The Second Room

The second room in our house began as our study.  I spent my first year of college trying to not get distracted from homework in that room.  In our second and third years of college the second room was mostly used for storage and playing computer games.  When friends or family came to stay with us, they would sleep on a foam mattress on the floor in this room, wedged between the storage wardrobe and the hastily cleaned desk.  

To prepare the room for the baby we moved the giant desk out, shifted the bookshelf, constructed the cot and hung a few things.  The desk is now in the communal studies and J will use it there.  We left the desktop computer in our second room, in the corner on top of a set of desk drawers.  Not sure how often this will get used, not at all while it still doesn't work!

I’m a little bit bummed that I didn't take any ‘before’ photos of our second room.  It really was a mess!  We did a lot of throwing out and reorganising to make space for the baby.  But here are the ‘after’ photos (or at least the corner of it that is the nursery).



This is the first view you get of the room, from the doorway.  We were given the cot for free from friends who have graduated from college and used to live in our college community.  We also got the drawers and change table for free from a friend of a friend. 



A friend crocheted the baby bunting as a gift and I love the grey chevron cot sheet, which was also a baby shower gift.  Sitting in the corner of the cot is Rachelle the Rabbit, which I knitted from a kit that my mum found and gave to me for Christmas.  It’s so rare to find something that has my name spelt correctly, so this was a very exciting find.  I’m glad I was able to finish knitting sewing her together before the baby arrived. 



This mobile was made by a lovely friend of mine as a baby shower gift.  I love it.  We hung it from the ceiling using two stick-on hooks in opposite directions which has worked well.  The drawing of the daffodils on the left was a gift from my sister, and the frame on the right has the fingerprints of everyone who came to celebrate at my baby showers (two colours for two cities).  My sister drew the umbrella in that picture. 

Unfortunately, this frame has since fallen off the wall.  Becuase we rent we can’t put holes in the wall, so I use sticky hooks or ‘velcro’ hangers (I don’t know what else to call them, but it’s not exactly velcro, they are the 3M Command brand, and they and wonderful for this sort of thing!).  Actually not so wonderful in this case.  As you can see the wall is a bit textured, which may have meant the hook didn’t stick so well.  The hook also said it could hold up to 2.2kg and the frame was 2kg.  I’m hoping that going up a size will mean I can re-hang this frame. 

Well there it is.  The baby won’t sleep in here until they’re a bit bigger, but we needed the space set up for changing nappies and storing the baby’s clothes.  A big thank you to everyone who has given us gifts to help prepare for baby’s arrival.  On Monday I’ll be 37 weeks pregnant (full-term) and we’re so excited to meet our little baby. 

Thankful Thursday

Getting an assignment finished
Last week was my final Research Week of my college career!  I chose to look at the significance of Jesus’ resurrection in the argument of the letter to the Romans.  I’m not sure that I answered the question very well, but I enjoyed looking at Romans in more detail and the things that I have now learnt about it.  Now I know roughly what is the subject of most chapters, and I’ve understood the flow of the argument a bit better.  Of course, the lectures that we’ve been having on Romans this week in class have shown up the holes in my essay!

I often grumble about doing assignments.  It’s my least favourite part of studying at college.  But I’m so thankful for what I have learnt through the process of doing assignments (and thankful that the big assignments are over for me!).

Adelaide catch ups
We flew to Adelaide on Friday for a family wedding.  (This made finishing the assignment due Friday a bit tricky, but thankfully we both managed.)  We saw a lot of people over the weekend because of the wedding and because we visited our home church on Sunday morning.  I’m an introvert, so by the end of the weekend I was feeling pretty emotionally tired (let alone physically because of the late nights of assignment writing and wedding reception).  But despite this, I’m so glad we got the chance to catch up with some of our family and friends. 

Clothes airers (and the space to set them up in)
Normally I do the washing on the weekend but that obviously wasn’t possible this time.  The weather was a bit dreary at the beginning of this week so I had to hang the clothes inside.  I’m thankful for clothes airers that mean a lot of clothes can be hung up in a small space.  I’m also thankful that we have some spaces around our house where the clothes airer is relatively out of the way.  We’re not going to have as much of that free space next year so I’m reminded to be thankful for it now.  (More about that decreased space in another post!)

What are you thankful for this week?

Living in a fishbowl

We don’t often think about our curtains and blinds.  The way they let in or block out light as we desire.  Sometimes we might get frustrated when they don’t work as effectively as we think they should, or when we have to clean them (I’ve never tried washing curtains but venetian blinds are a pain to dust).  But I think we often just take them for granted.  All windows have them.  Except when they don’t. 

There are some significant renovations going on in our block of units.  Basically the whole front of 11 of the units needed to be replaced.  The wooden frames would be replaced with metal.  That meant the whole front had to come off. 

Here’s what it looked like for one of the units (friends of ours recently moved out of this unit). 

Here’s our house with the whole front gone.  We put up plastic painting sheets as makeshift walls to keep the dust off our furniture. 

Unfortunately the workmen had to pull the edge of it down so that they could get in.  They put the new frame on the same day but the insides weren’t finished until several days later.  So we lived in our blind-less, compacted living space with our plastic sheets hanging from the ceiling until the inside could be finished.  I felt like I was living in a fishbowl. 

Thankfully our friends who were away on holidays and had lent us their car had also generously lent us their house and bed if we needed it.  So we took refuge in their house most of the time.  We decided to sleep in our own bed, despite having no blinds, knowing that if the sun didn’t wake us, the workmen starting at 7:30 would. 

 

We’re still waiting for the blinds to go back up, but when we got back from our week away the inside panelling was finished and even the door was painted.  I stuck some newspaper to the window following some of the other units so that we would have a little bit of privacy.  Here’s hoping the blinds will go up soon so we can spread our furniture out again!

Thankful Thursday

This week has felt like a pretty regular week.  At least, I’m struggling to come up with anything interesting to write about for today’s Thankful Thursday post.  But that’s kind of the point of this series.  It was to help me to find things in my life to be thankful to God for, perhaps especially when life feels pretty normal.  Here are some of the things I’m thankful for this week:

Internet
We recently had new hardware installed in our house that has made internet access much easier at home.  I know that we are incredibly blessed that college provides us with internet at no extra cost.  I am now even more thankful that it is working at home again and not just in our studies in the unit block next to ours.  When we moved here to study at college we never expected to be provided with internet so this is something we are constantly thankful for (even though we sometimes grizzle when it is slow or not working).

Progress with my knitting
I learnt to knit last year (or relearned if you count the one square that I never finished when I was a kid).  I knitted one scarf and then promptly stopped again.  By the time I had finished it the weather had changed out of scarf-temperature.  But I have been re-inspired lately and had a lot of time on Saturday to knit, for which I am thankful.  I’ve been following a pattern sort-of.  Well, it’s really following a certain stitch or texture and I’m making up how wide and long I want the scarf to be. 

  
Dinner with friends
This week we’ll have gone out to dinner at friends’ houses twice (Tuesday night and tonight).  I really enjoy the opportunity that having dinner together gives for getting to know each other better.  We’ve really enjoyed winter dinners in our community where we have dinner with a different family each week.  Tonight’s invitation came from some fellow students in our year at college and I’m thankful for their hospitality in inviting us and the chance to spend some time with them outside of college.

What are you thankful for this week?

Thankful Thursday

It has been a little while since I’ve posted but this Thankful Thursday series always seems to give me a little push back into writing.  I already posted something earlier today (mostly because it made this post too long so I had to spread it out).  Sometimes I have other things that I want to write about on Thursdays but I have to wait to spread the posts out. We’ve just gone back to college after a week of holidays so I’ll write a little bit about that.  I also want to post about some of the things I’ve been learning about myself in the last few weeks but they’ll wait for another post.

Anyway, here are some things that I’m thankful for this week:

Busy but good holidays
We did a lot in our one week of holidays.  This has left us a bit tired as we started back at college but I don’t think there’s much I would have changed.  The first weekend we flew back home to attend a family wedding and it was lovely to catch up with friends and family there, and to spend some relaxing time with our parents.  We flew under the radar in order to not tire ourselves out, and only organised one catch-up with friends.  We’re sorry friends if you wanted to see us.  Please let me know if you would like to catch up next time we’re home and let me know what you’re up to in the mean time!  I love hearing from friends.

After flying home on Tuesday we readied ourselves to go camping with friends at a spot three hours drive north of Sydney.  We stayed there Wednesday to Friday and had a lovely time relaxing by reading, drawing and knitting (well the drawing and knitting was me not J), sitting around the fire, and doing not much.  On the first night we didn’t have marshmallows to toast over the fire, which was a travesty in my mind.  How can you be camping and sitting around the fire without marshmallows?!  The next day the guys kindly drove the half hour into town to buy some!

Friday afternoon when we got home saw us quickly unpacking the car and re-packing (with the full-size keyboard) to go to a youth conference as part of the music team.  Thankfully that was all we were involved in so we could have some time to relax and get in a bit of college work before term started. 

I loved each of these things that we did but the rush between them was sometimes stressful.  So I’m also thankful for my wonderful husband and his care for me through all of this. 

Wooden floorboards (or simply: no carpet)
If you’ve been paying any attention to the weather in Sydney this week you’d know how the city has been turned into one giant wading pool.  (Actually, as I write this the sky is sunny and the ground dry, hoorah for a reprieve!).  So this week I have been thankful for the wooden floorboards in our house that I don’t have to worry about getting wet as we step inside from the rain.  In fact, our whole house has no carpet.  It’s all floorboards and tiles.  So with the back door leaking a puddle I’m glad I can just leave a towel there to soak it up and not have to worry about drying out wet carpet.

Raincoats
I ran home from college this week!  I’ve posted about it here.  It was rainy and windy and I was so thankful for my raincoat.  It didn’t keep me completely dry but it did keep the wind out so my ears could stay warm.  My ears always ache in the cold wind which makes running unpleasant so I was extremely thankful for warm ears!

What are you thankful for this week?

A celebration of a life still lived

Over the weekend I flew back home to attend my Grandpa’s 80th birthday party.  It was a very quick visit.  I flew in on Saturday afternoon and out again Sunday night.  My parents generously paid for the flights because they thought Grandpa would really appreciate it.  When we turned up at my uncle’s place where the party was being held Grandpa did seem particularly touched and surprised to see me.  It seemed like he was a little overwhelmed a few times throughout the afternoon, touched by who had come and what they said about him.

Grandpa’s oldest child, my aunty, organised a time for people to share stories about Grandpa. 

The thing that stuck with me the most was how much Grandpa loves Grandma.  It is noticeable.  People had stories about it.  He does things for Grandma as soon as she mentions it.  He still counts himself lucky to have her. 

My aunty said that she and her siblings, Grandpa’s children, had much to live up to in this area.  But not just his children, I thought.  His grandchildren too.  What a great example of selfless love my Grandpa is. 

The Bible says that marriage is a picture, a reflection, a model of Jesus’ love for his bride, the church.  And we all know what that love looks like.  That love laid down Jesus’ life for the sake of the church, of those who follow Jesus.  God calls husbands and wives to love each other sacrificially like this.  What a great example of selfless love my saviour Jesus is. 

I’ve seen some of this in my Grandpa and I’ve been reinspired by him to love my husband like that too.  Thank you Grandpa for your life well lived.  Thank you for the example of your love still lived.  Happy Birthday. 

Late Thankful Thursday

I’m sorry that this one is late.  Yesterday was full of house cleaning and friends so I had no time to sit down and write this.  But here is is, better late than never.

Here’s what I’m thankful for this week:

Our time in Adelaide
We had a wonderful time in Adelaide, catching up with some family and friends.  We didn’t get to see everyone, and for that we are disappointed, but this did mean we didn’t completely tire ourselves out hopping from one appointment to another.  It was lovely to be back in our familiar places, hanging out with old friends, having meals with our families.  We are both looking forward to returning to Adelaide after we’ve finished at college. 

Being home again
But as nice as it was to be in Adelaide with friends and family, it’s also nice to be home, in our own bed, with our full wardrobe, our own bathroom.  Not that I didn’t appreciate the spaces that our parents made available to us.  There’s just something about being in your own home, where your things are packed away into cupboards and not a suitcase.  Now that we’re home I’ve been watching some TV, reading and relaxing before we go back to college next week. 

Time with friends
Yesterday we spent the afternoon with friends in town, walking through some of the Botanic Gardens and then visiting the Art Gallery.  Though we’ve been here for a year and a half, we still haven’t seen many of these things of this city.  Afterwards we had our friends over to our place for dinner.  It was lovely spending time with these friends.  They shared with us things we didn’t know about the Gardens or the Gallery.  They we’re patient with us as we finished preparing dinner, and we just enjoyed chatting and sharing our lives.  We are thankful for these friends.

What are you thankful for this week?